Okay so i thought china was supposed to be this big socialist nation where the poor people dont have to worry about this sort of thing...where the rich get their @$$ taxed off, and there is income equality...seems like our poor people here in good ol "capitalist america" are doing alot better then theirs.
shareThat's how weak minded libbies are sucked in. When they surrender all of their earnings and possessions, the government divies it up among themselves, and let's its people fend for themselves. Is it a coincidence that we pay so much to Obama and his cronies despite them racking up a huge debt, and then it turns out that most of the best jobs are government jobs?
shareI'm not American... But didn't the financial crisis begin before Obama was in power... you know, when a republican called Bush and his Goldman Sachs buddies were in office...?
shareI'm not sure where you got the idea that China is a socialist state. China is staunchly capitalist.
shareObama has nothing to deal with that crisis. Our banking institutions were all headed toward failure. Banks are #1 world powers in the world
In an economical context China is very capitalistic, however there are a bunch of national conglomerates that are part of the "free market." Usually these companies have a large stake in the chinese market. One example is the COFCO group. They are a state owned food processing company.
Manufacturing took off in the 1980s and 1990s because the government opened the country up to foreign investment and privatised many primary and secondary industries, which had been a train-wreck under Mao. Having said that the government has maintained rapid growth rates largely supported by the being the largest manufacturer of secondary goods in the world, by keeping wages artificially low. This involves suppressing independent trade unions and the right to strike which would be cornerstones of a democratic socialist state.
Like all totalitarian Communist regimes in history, China has shown scant regard for working conditions and workers' rights in practice. In China, try taking up an industrial dispute through official channels or even try an informal approach such making any sort of complaint such as unsafe working conditions, whether in a privately owned or state owned company, and chances are you will upset some powerful people with links to the government and you will get framed for a crime like theft. In good old North Korea, try doing the same and there are no prizes for guessing what would become of you. You can join an officially state-sanctioned trade union, but its officials are members of the Party and that's where their loyalties lie.
However, ask anyone in Mainland China over forty and they will tell you it is a much easier place to live nowadays than under Mao. Forty years ago, a farming family from the countryside like this would be worried about whether their collective farm would provide enough food to see them through winter. The prospect of their daughter following her parents into a life of drudgery would be a trivial concern given that for a rural farming family, the possibility of her completing high school simply wouldn't have been there. As the eldest child, the daughter might have only had a few years of primary schooling and would have left semi-literate at the age of eight or nine. The son may have been able to complete enough primary schooling to read and write at a functional level but that's about it. Economic opportunities in the cities were virtually non-existent and for a handful of peasants who were selected to work in the cities, the only added advantage would have been enough food. I noticed how in the film despite her meagre wages, after she started working the daughter was able to afford some basic luxuries such as going to a hair dresser, buying some clothes and going out for a drink. At the start the parents were (eventually) able to get a train ticket home for the New Year. Nobody working as a sweatshop labourer would have dreamed of these small comforts under Mao.
As a member of a trade union myself, I actually believe there needs to a robust private sector to create wealth similar to what we have seen in China since the 1980s. However, workers also have the right to independent representation under a free and transparent government and this is where China has still failed.
The Communist Party of China hardly has it their way. They're more interested in retaining their seats in the legislature, their power, than implementing the Karl Marx's vision. They do some stupid communistesque things with the public sector, though. They've built a number of entire cities from the ground up, likely intended as utopia zones, but they cannot figure out how to allocate the capital that those manufactured cities represent. It's a mess. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3XfpYxHKCo.
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